Mouser was their cat. Peter had seen the poor creature lounging on a windowsill in the common room—a pitiful rag of a thing, flesh drooping over his brittle old bones like laundry on a line. Peter drew the blanket up to Caleb’s chin and bent to kiss him on the forehead. Sisters were moving up and down the lines of cots, shushing the other children. The room’s lights had already been extinguished.
“When are you coming back, Uncle Peter?”
“I’m not sure. Soon, I hope.”
“Can we go swimming again?”
A warm feeling spread through his entire body. “Only if you promise we can play more chess. I don’t think I have the hang of it yet. I could use a few pointers.”
The boy beamed. “I promise.”
Amy was waiting for him in the empty common room, the cat nosing around her feet. He had to report to the barracks at 2100; he and Amy would have only a few minutes together.
“That poor thing,” Peter said. “Why doesn’t anybody put him down? It seems cruel.”
Amy ran a hand along the animal’s spine. A faint purr trembled from him as he arched his back to receive her touch. “It’s past time, I suppose. But the children adore him, and the sisters don’t believe in it. Only God can take a life.”
“They’ve obviously never been to New Mexico.”
A joke, but not entirely. Amy regarded him with concern. “You look troubled, Peter.”
“Things aren’t going very well. Do you want to know about it?”
She considered the question. She seemed a little pale; Peter wondered if she was feeling all right.
“Maybe some other time.” Her eyes searched his face. “He loves you, you know. He talks about you all the time.”
“You’re making me feel guilty. Probably I deserve it.”
She lifted Mouser to settle him on her lap. “He understands. I’m only telling you so you know how important you are to him.”
“What about you? Are you doing okay here?”
She nodded. “On the whole, it suits me. I like the company, the children, the sisters. And of course there’s Caleb. Maybe for the first time in my life I actually feel… I don’t know. Useful. It’s nice to be just an ordinary person.”
Peter was struck by the frank, easy flow of the conversation. Some barrier between them had dropped. “Do the other sisters know? Besides Sister Peg, I mean.”
“A few do, or maybe just suspect. I’ve been here for five years, and they’d have to notice I’m not aging. I think I’m a bit of a wrinkle to Sister Peg, something that doesn’t really fit her view of things. But she doesn’t say anything about it to me.” Amy smiled. “After all, I make a mean barley soup.”
Too quickly, the moment of his departure was at hand. Amy walked him to the entrance, where Peter pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and held it out to her.
“Give this to Sister Peg, all right?”
Amy nodded without comment and slid the scrip into the pocket of her skirt. Once again she pulled him into a hug, more forcefully this time. “I really have missed you.” Her voice was soft against his chest. “Be safe, all right? Promise you’ll do that.”
There was something fraught in her insistence, a feeling, almost, of finality, a graver parting. What wasn’t she saying? And something else: her body was giving off a feverish heat. He could actually feel it pulsing through the heavy fabric of his uniform.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“I mean it, Peter. If anything happened, I couldn’t …” Her voice trailed away, as if pulled to the currents of a hidden wind. “I just couldn’t is all.”
Now he was certain: there was something Amy wasn’t telling him. Peter searched her face for what it was. A faint glaze of perspiration shone on her brow.
“Are you okay?”
Taking his hand in her own, she lifted them in concert, pressing her palm against his so that the pads of their fingers were just touching. It seemed a gesture with equal measures of togetherness and parting, connection and separation.
“Do you remember when I kissed you?”
They had never spoken of this—her quick, birdlike peck at the mall, the virals streaming toward them. Much had happened, but Peter had not forgotten. How could he?
“I always wondered about that,” he confessed.
Their raised hands seemed to hover in the darkened space between them. Amy studied them with her eyes. It was as if she were attempting to divine a meaning she herself had made. “I’d been alone so long. It’s nothing I can even describe. But all of a sudden, there you were. I couldn’t believe it.” Then, as if jarred from a trance, she withdrew her hand, her face suddenly flustered. “That’s all. You better go—you’ll be late.”
He didn’t want to. Like the kiss, the feeling of her hand seemed to possess a unique power to linger in his senses, as if it had taken up a permanent residence in his fingertips. He wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words, and the moment slipped away.
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
Her face assembled a smile. “Never better.”
She really did look ill, he thought. “Well, I’ll be back in ten days.”
Amy said nothing.
“I’ll see you then, right?” He wondered why he was asking this.
“Of course, Peter. Where would I go?”
After Peter had left, Amy made her way to the sisters’ residence, a smaller version of the dormitories where the children slept. The other sisters were all asleep, a few of the older ones softly snoring. She stripped off her tunic and lowered herself onto her cot.
Sometime later she awoke with a start. A cold sweat glazed her body, drenching her nightshirt. The turbulence of uneasy dreams still roiled through her.
She froze.
—Father?
She rose, seized with a sudden purposefulness. The moment had come.
Yet one duty remained, one final task to be performed in these last days of a life she had loved, if briefly. Through the silent hallways she padded her way to the common room. She found Mouser just where she had left him, resting on the couch. Exhaustion radiated from his eyes; his limbs were limp, he could barely raise his head.
Gently she lifted him to her chest. Running a hand along his back, she turned so he could face the window, with its view of the starry night.
“See the pretty world, Mouser?” she murmured, close to his ear. “See the pretty stars?”
His neck broke with a snap, the body going limp in her arms. Amy stayed that way for a few minutes while his presence faded, stroking his fur, kissing his head and face.
